The bearing tree was where the surveyor said it would be, a hundred and eighteen years ago.
Thorsen stood in the snow with the plat in its plastic sleeve in one hand and Claire’s old compass in the other. A white pine, three feet through, and on its south-west face, at the height of his knee, a long healed scar in the bark. Somebody had cut a blaze into the trunk with an axe in the summer of 1908, and the tree had spent the rest of the century closing over the wound from the edges in, so that now there was only a lipped seam of new bark like a mouth pressed shut.
On the plat, in the corner where the line between section eleven and section twelve met the line across the middle of the sections, there was a tiny circle and a note in faded copperplate ink. ¼ Cor. Iron post w/ brass cap. B.T. W. Pine 36 in. N 22° E 41 lks.
Forty-one links was twenty-seven feet; he had looked it up on Claire’s computer the night before, while she read over his shoulder as though the nineteenth century were showing off.
He set the compass, and turned, and paced it out through the knee-deep snow between the trunks, counting. At nine paces he stopped and knelt and began to dig with his gloved hands.
He had come in on foot from the north, a mile and a half down an old snowmobile trail through the state forest. The pines had been here when Joseph Lacourse walked through them. They had been the reason.
Eighteen inches down his fingers struck metal.
He cleared it. An iron pipe, rusted brown, two inches across, coming up out of the frozen earth, and on top of it, fitted over the end like a cap on a bottle, a disc of brass gone brown and green with age. He wiped the snow off it with his thumb and bent close.
U.S. GENERAL LAND OFFICE SURVEY. Round the edge. And in the middle, stamped into the soft metal in rows, T 58 N — R 7 W, and a line, and on either side of the line S 11 and S 12, and under it ¼, and 1908. And round the bottom, in smaller letters: $250 FINE FOR DISTURBING THIS MARK.
He photographed it with the 7-Eleven phone, close, and then with the plat laid in the snow beside it. Then he walked fifty yards west, inside Joseph Lacourse’s allotment, to a cleared square he had passed on his way in: a pad of crushed gravel with a capped steel pipe in the middle and a stake at each corner tied with pink ribbon. One of the stakes had a metal tag on it. LCC — ARROWHEAD — DH-24-117. A drill hole. Laurentian had been here, coring for copper, inside a quarter-section that a man had been given by the United States in 1908, to be held in trust for his sole use and benefit and not to be sold.
He photographed that too. One bar. He sent all of it to Wally, one picture at a time, and watched the little line crawl across the bottom of the screen.
On the last one he heard the engine.
It came through the trees from the south, a high angry whine, and then it was in sight between the trunks: a side-by-side, a squat green utility vehicle with a roll cage and fat tyres throwing snow, with three men in it. It stopped twenty feet away in a spray of white.
Two of them were young, in orange hats and jackets with HALE LAND & TIMBER on the chest, and one had a rifle in a scabbard on the cage beside him.
The third got out from behind the wheel.
“Well,” Jarrett Pruitt said. “Look who’s lost.”
He was in the black canvas jacket. It was unzipped. The Glock was on his hip, back in its holster, and Pruitt saw him look at it, and smiled, and patted it.
“Got a new one,” he said. “Magazine. Twenty-nine bucks at the Fleet Farm in Hermantown. You owe me twenty-nine bucks.”
Thorsen put the phone in his pocket.
“You’re on posted land, buddy,” Pruitt said. “Hale Land and Timber. Private property. There’s signs.”
“Not on the north side.”
“There’s signs.”
“There are signs on the south line, along the county road,” Thorsen said. “There’s nothing on the north line. I came in off state land and I haven’t passed a sign.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re on Hale land.”
“That’s the question, isn’t it,” Thorsen said.
Pruitt’s mouth went thin. He looked past Thorsen at the hole in the snow, and the brown brass cap at the bottom of it, and back.
“I’m asking you to leave,” he said. “Right now. As agent for the landowner. These two are witnesses. I’m asking you to leave.”
“I’m leaving.”
Thorsen turned and started walking. North, back the way he had come, along his own track through the snow between the pines. He had gone perhaps fifteen paces when he heard Pruitt behind him talking into a radio, loud, so that he would hear it.
“Baptism, this is Hale One. I’ve got a trespasser on the Kettle tract. Refused to leave when asked. Ex-cop from California. I’d say he’s hostile.”
The radio said something. Pruitt laughed.
“Sure,” he said. “We’ll keep him company.”
The side-by-side came along behind him through the trees at a walking pace, twenty feet back, all the way to the edge of the old growth where the pines gave way to birch and balsam; and it was there, at the line, that he saw the black Tahoe coming down the snowmobile trail towards him from the north, bucking and sliding in the ruts, with its light bar going.
It stopped in front of him. Hollister got out.
He came across the snow in a fur hat and a big tan parka, with a long black four-cell torch in a ring on his belt knocking against his thigh, and his hand already out, not to shake, but palm up, the way you hold it out to a dog you are not sure of.
“Well, now,” he said. “Mr. Thorsen.”
“Sheriff.”
“Out for a walk?”
“I was looking at a survey corner.”
“A survey corner.” Hollister nodded slowly, as though it were a perfectly reasonable thing for a man to do in a foot of snow on the sixteenth of November. He looked past Thorsen at Pruitt, who had stopped the side-by-side at a respectful distance and was sitting with his arm along the roll cage. “Jarrett tells me he asked you to leave.”
“I left.”
“Jarrett tells me you refused.”
“I left, Sheriff. You’re looking at me leaving.”
Hollister smiled. It was the smile from the lobby, from the gym, the smile of a man who has been elected six times.
“Well,” he said. “I’ve got to take Jarrett’s word on that. He’s the landowner’s agent, and he’s got two witnesses.” He took a pair of handcuffs off his belt. “Criminal trespass, Mr. Thorsen. I’m going to ask you to turn round and put your hands behind your back. And I’d take it as a kindness if you didn’t make this harder than it is. I’ve got a bad shoulder.”
Thorsen looked at the cuffs, and at Pruitt grinning openly in the side-by-side, and at the two young men in the orange hats, one of whom had taken out his own phone and was filming.
He turned round and put his hands behind his back.
Hollister did the cuffs up firmly, but not cruelly, and patted Thorsen down, and found the phone, and held it up in his gloved hand.
“I’ll be taking this,” he said. “Evidence.”
“Of what?”
“Of where you’ve been.” Hollister put it in his parka pocket. He did not look at the screen. Thorsen thought about Wally’s phone in a grey Ford somewhere on the shore, buzzing, and buzzing again.
Hollister put a hand on his elbow and turned him towards the Tahoe.
“Mind your head, now,” he said.
The Baptism County Law Enforcement Center smelled the way all of them smelled, of floor wax and burnt coffee. They took his belt and his bootlaces and Ray’s napkin out of his shirt pocket, and his fingerprints on a glass plate that glowed green under his hands.
Hollister did it himself, with great courtesy, talking the whole time. His sister’s grandson was thinking of applying to the LAPD; would Thorsen have any advice for a young fellow like that.
“Don’t,” Thorsen said.
Hollister laughed. It sounded real.
“You’ll be our guest tonight,” he said, when it was done. “I’m sorry about that. Judge isn’t in till Tuesday. Judge Pike sits in Nordby Tuesdays and Thursdays.” He shook his head. “I’d let you go on a citation if it was up to me. But with the refusing to leave, and you being from out of state, and no fixed address — well. I’d hate for you to miss your court date.”
“I’ve got an address. I’m parked at it.”
“A van,” Hollister said gently. “In a field.” He nodded to the deputy at the desk. “Kayla, would you take Mr. Thorsen back. Put him in seven.”
Deputy Novak got up from behind the desk.
She did not look at him. She took him by the elbow, the way they were taught, and walked him down the corridor with her face red to the ears and her eyes on the floor.
At the cell she unlocked the door and stood aside to let him in. Then, before she swung it shut, she reached behind her to the trolley in the corridor and took a second blanket off the pile, grey, folded, and put it into his arms on top of the first.
“It gets cold in seven,” she said, to the blanket. “The heating’s on the other side.”
“Thank you, Deputy.”
She shut the door. He heard the lock go over, and her boots going away down the corridor, quickly.
There were eight cells in the Baptism County jail, four on each side of a short corridor. Cell seven had a steel bench, a steel toilet, and a high window of glass blocks that let in a light that was not quite daylight. Novak had not been lying about the heating. He sat on the bench in orange clothes too short in the arms and legs, with both blankets round his shoulders, and looked at the wall.
After a while somebody on the other side of it knocked. Three knocks, slow, and then two quick.
He knew that knock. He had not heard it since he was eleven. It was the knock that meant are you awake, on the boards between their cots in the loft, the summer they were nine and seven.
He knocked back. Two quick, three slow. Yes.
“Jesus Christ,” Nils said through the wall. His voice came clearly through the cinderblock. “Danny? Is that you? What the hell are you doing in here?”
“Trespass.”
“Trespass?” A long pause. Then a sound that Thorsen did not recognise at first, because he had not heard it since he was a boy either. Nils was laughing. “Trespass. The big cop from LA. On the TV.” He laughed until he coughed. “Where?”
“Hale’s land. The Kettle tract.”
“What were you doing on Hale’s land?”
“Looking at a brass cap on an iron pipe.”
There was a silence on the other side of the wall.
“You’re a weird guy, Danny,” Nils said at last, with great affection. “You always were a weird kid.”
They talked.
At first it was awkward. Nils said Kayla Novak sometimes brought him a doughnut when she was on nights, and that she was the only one who called him Mr. Thorsen. Then the glass blocks went to black, and it got easier.
“You remember the loft,” Nils said.
“I remember the loft.”
“The rain on the tin. You used to tell me ghost stories. The drowned men coming up the dock at night with weed in their hair, looking for their boats.”
Thorsen lay on his back and looked at the ceiling. There was a water stain on it, the shape of a fish.
“He loved you,” Nils said. “Dad. You know that? Those summers. You were the one he took out in the boat. You were the one he let steer. I used to be so jealous. I used to think, he likes Danny better, because Danny’s not scared of the lake and I am.” A pause. “When you went, he didn’t talk for about a month. Mom said he’d sit out on the end of the dock at night. Just sit there.” The cot creaked. “He’s been like that again since Mom. Sitting. Talking to Granddad, nearly. He came over that night, you know. About eleven. Sat on my step in his shirt, in the cold. Talked about Granddad. Said it was never ours, the Point.” A short laugh with nothing in it. “He gets like that since Mom. I was drunk. I don’t remember the half of it.”
Thorsen looked at the stain on the ceiling. An old man on a trailer step at eleven at night, in his shirtsleeves, with all of 1986 in him and a buyer’s cheque coming. It was never ours. He filed it where it went.
“Do you remember that night?” Nils said. “When you went?”
“Not much. My mother waking me. The car in the lane.”
“I woke up,” Nils said slowly, “because somebody was crying. In the yard. And your cot was empty, and I went to the window, and it was Aunt Ana, standing in the yard in her coat, crying, and your dad putting bags in the car with the lights off. And I banged on the glass and called you. Danny. Danny. Nobody looked up. And I watched the lights go up through the trees till they were gone.” He stopped. “In the morning I asked Dad where you were. He was at the stove. He had a bandage on his face, here. He said, Gone home. Just that. And I said, when are they coming back. And he didn’t say anything. And nobody ever said your dad’s name in that house again. Not once. Not Granddad, not Mom, not Dad. Like he’d died. Like you all had.”
The corridor lights hummed.
“I heard you,” Thorsen said. “Calling. I think I heard you.”
“Yeah?”
“I think so.”
“What happened, Danny?” he said. “Do you know? Is that what you’ve been finding out? Dad talks to you. He never talked to me about anything. Not about your dad, not about Granddad, not about any of it. What happened?”
Thorsen lay on the bench and looked at the stain shaped like a fish, and thought about an old man at a kitchen table with tears in his white beard. Don’t tell Nils. He loved his granddad. He loves me. Let him have one of us.
“Is it bad?” Nils said. “Is it Dad?”
Thorsen said nothing. He had promised, and he said nothing, and the nothing went on through the cinderblock for longer than any answer would have taken.
“…I know,” Nils said.
The heating pipes ticked.
“I’ve always known something,” Nils said, very quietly. “Since I was a kid. Not what. Just something. In that house you could feel where the furniture was even with the lights off.”
Of course he has, Thorsen thought. A boy of nine in that kitchen, with his uncle’s name never said and a bandage on his father’s face. Of course he had.
It was much later, after the corridor lights had gone down to the night setting and the jail had gone quiet except for somebody snoring at the far end, that Nils said, out of nowhere:
“I keep thinking about it. That night. Strand.”
Thorsen opened his eyes.
“I told you about the car,” Nils said. “Round midnight, I think. At the gate. I told Hollister. So you knew he was there.” The bitterness in it was very old and very tired. “I didn’t tell him the other thing. It didn’t seem like anything. It isn’t anything.”
“Tell me.”
“After the car. I dozed off again in the chair. And then about one, maybe a bit after, I woke up and went out on the step to piss off the side like I always do. And it was cold, and quiet, with cloud come in low over the lake. And there was a light in the fish house.”
Thorsen lay very still.
“Down the smokehouse end,” Nils said. “In the little window by the chimney. Flickering. Yellow. Like a fire. And I could smell it. Smoke. Woodsmoke and something else, something nasty, like when you burn a tyre.” He shifted on his cot. “And I thought, that’s Dad at the smoker. He used to do that, after Mom died. Sit by the firebox nights. He hadn’t in years. I thought, he’s started again.” A pause. “So I didn’t think anything. I went back in and went back to sleep in the chair. And in the morning I went down to check the nets, and I saw the Subaru at the gate, and I went out on the Point, and there he was.” His voice went thin. “I never thought about the light again till I was in here. It’s not anything, is it? It’s just Dad not sleeping.”
“Your mouth,” Thorsen said. “The booking photo the paper ran when they arrested you. Your lip was split.”
“Fell off the trailer step that night, going out to piss.” Nils sounded almost amused. “Half asleep and all drunk. Split it on the rail of the step. Bled like a pig in my beard. Hollister wrote it down like it was a confession.”
Thorsen was thinking about a kitchen at the Point, on the first afternoon, with the egg coffee boiling in the blue enamel pot, and an old man with scabbed knuckles turning his cup a quarter turn on the table. I’ve been selling smoked fish to tourists out of a cooler at the end of the lane. Till Labor Day, anyway. I haven’t lit the smoker since.
“Danny? You still there?”
“I’m here.”
“It’s nothing. Right?”
At the far end of the corridor somebody turned over and the snoring stopped and started again.
“Go to sleep, Nils,” Thorsen said.
At ten past three the steel door at the end of the corridor buzzed and banged open, and boots came down the corridor, unhurried, and stopped outside cell seven.
Something hit the door. Hard. The butt of a torch, the long black four-cell, three times, a long hollow clang that went through the steel and the bench and Thorsen’s teeth. The light came in through the square of wired glass, white, full in his face.
“Rise and shine, LA.” It was Kline, the deputy from the Legion car park. “Bed check. Just making sure you’re comfortable.”
Thorsen did not move. He lay on the bench with his eyes open in the light and looked at the window.
The light stayed on him for a while. Then the torch hit the door again, three times. Then it moved to the next door, and hit that.
“Hey, Nils. You awake, buddy? Your cousin’s here. Family reunion. Isn’t that nice. You guys can share a cell at Stillwater.”
There was a pause. Then Nils’s voice came from the other side of the wall, quite calm, quite clear, without any of the slur or the bluster or the self-pity Thorsen had heard in it through the plexiglass. It was the voice of a big man lying on a bench who has had enough.
“Travis,” Nils said. “I’ve known you since you were six. I taught you to swim off our dock. Your mother used to send you up to us for smoked fish because your dad drank the grocery money. Now turn off your flashlight and fuck off.”
The silence in the corridor went on.
Then the torch went out, and the boots went away down the corridor, rather faster than they had come, and the steel door banged.
Thorsen lay on his back in the dark and found that he was laughing, silently, into the grey blanket, and could not stop, and on the other side of the wall he could hear Nils doing the same.
He did not sleep after that. He lay on the steel bench under Kayla Novak’s blanket and watched the glass blocks go from black to grey, while on the other side of the wall his cousin breathed, slow and deep, a man asleep. Somewhere outside, over the town, a plough went by on the hill with its blade scraping, and its orange light went round and round on the ceiling of cell seven, once, twice, and was gone.